


From a Simmer to a Boil

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: AU, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Vampire!Laura, physical altercation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gone off canon around episode 22 or so: Will grazes Laura during their fight in the bathroom, resulting in her joining the legions of the undead. But she's Laura Hollis! It's going to take more than a case of immortality to taint her soul, even with this oppressive heat blanketing her body. </p>
<p>Some Laura optimism, an escalation of events with the arrival of one broody Carmilla, and an understanding that help is just a roommate away. Humorously dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From a Simmer to a Boil

“What the—?”

Laura wakes to the sound of Niagara in her ears, a drumming, persistent slosh; but there’s no patterned thump. And she’s thirsty. _R_ _eally_ thirsty. As in, ‘ate an entire package of triple choco-chunk cookies sans milk chaser and now my throat is sandpaper’ thirsty.

Laura shakes her head and the gurgly slosh intensifies, so she swings her legs out of bed and shuffles to the sink, grabs a mug and rinses it, turns the tap and waits for it to fill.

And then her face is drenched, because apparently she’s _stuck her mouth under the faucet_ and... why did she do that again?

Oh, right.

_Thirsty._

Something is… off. Her lips are chapped and her hands are twitching with a light tremor, and she has sudden flashes of the moments directly following her mother’s accident: where she remembers being utterly discomfited and physically bereft, equilibrium and stasis and sense surrendered to the post-traumatic convulsions and dry-heaves that accompany the knowledge of a loved one’s passing. She inhales with strained effort, and freaks the second she realizes she hasn’t been breathing since she stepped out of bed.

The mug is overflowing but she flings it at her face, gulping and swallowing and definitely _not enough_ , so she fills it to the brim again and slurps, and gags a little, but her throat still feels as if it’s been clogged with unspun cotton fibers. The air is warm and damn the mushroom spores but she _can’t breathe_.

And she knows, in the rational part of her mind, that she’s probably having a panic attack. That she’s supposed to calm herself and take measured breaths into a paper bag and count ponies or bunnies, or LaFontaine’s rainbow of unicorns and fairy dust, or just… _something._ But it’s weighted like a press against her chest and she just needs to be _out of this room_ because she can smell… everything.

Cocoa powder. Body odor. Burnt dust, from the wheezing fan on her laptop. Moth balls in the closet and concentrated vanilla from her shampoo. She flicks her tongue out like a snake and tastes the moisture on the air and then a tang, metallic… _iron_.

There’s blood on the floor and residue in the air.

Her mouth waters and tears spring to her eyes, because no.

Hell to the no.

Carmilla swore, she _swore_ … but Will…

Grazed her, and Laura had brushed it off, because Carmilla had had her fist cocked back with all the menacing power of her father’s Glock. Laura had scrambled behind her, but the scrape from Will? Dammit, the _nip_ —

She’s blinking and everything is so eerily clear, despite the fact that it’s two forty-seven in the morning and she’s craving something that might melt her taste buds. She hankers for the weird aftertaste of tin, like when she swallows the swill at the bottom of a canned soda. It would hit the spot immensely at present, but she’s all out of soda and Carmilla is _gone._ Laura's stifled by some sultry heat and she just knows she needs to _get out_.

She’s inside the cafeteria seconds later, but she doesn’t know how she arrived.

Laura stares at the drink machine and its selection of various pops, sports drinks and bottled waters looking back benignly. She starts when she presses the button, because, crap, she forgot change. But she’s still _craving_ , and vandalism is trivial when compared to the burden of thirst, so she shoves her slight wrist into the dispenser and violates the intestines of the machine.

She can’t reach anything, but she just wants a soda, just one measly can—

And then the frontlit façade of the machine has been ripped off its hinges. The bulbs in the underbelly flicker listlessly, revealing the rows of sodas stacked atop one another in neat little rows. She grabs one and punctures the top with the nail of her thumb, throws is back and gulps, gulps, drinks—and it does nothing.

She licks at the lip of the can and it slices the tip of her tongue. She tastes… something. Warmer than the cool soda, and different, from what she remembered her bloody mouth tasting like. She’s lost teeth and had her fair share of busted lips (as would any child, overbearing parent or no), but she knows, _knows_ , what blood is supposed to taste like. Not this, unsuitable, sour stream running off of her tongue. Blood is supposed to taste—

It’s supposed to sate her, make her not feel like… like… draining every member of the Summer Society. Like licking Danny’s neck while red trickles down. Like a melting cone of raspberry or cherry or strawberry sugar-syrup poured over shaved ice and shaped, dome like, cool and refreshing during summer time. She’s so distracted that she doesn’t realize she’s crushed an entire (filled) can of soda, the tin cutting into the meat of her hand and the orange carbonation sticking in pasty residual patches at random points along her fingers and palm.

And she knows, she does, what’s happened to her, but _hell_ if she’s going to let it consume her, turn her into something she’s not.

There are many things Laura Hollis isn’t, murderer, pessimist, alive (she supposes she’ll need to get used to being called _undead_ ), but come hell, high water or hemoglobin addiction is she going to let this… this… _ailment_ dictate her actions and undermine her principles.

So she rushes back to her dorm room, flings open the mini-fridge and exhausts Carmilla’s protein-soy-okay-it’s-really-blood supply. Her roomie can be pissed at her later. She’s not killed anyone yet, so Laura’s going to count that as a notch in the pro column.

The blood helps, and she discovers that different types do, in fact, taste like different things. There’s no distinct correlation between blood type and normal liquids ingested by humans, but she supposes the one labeled O- retains the sickly-confectionary, cheek-puckering aroma of candyfloss, and that A+ is heartier, bolder, like a full-bodied Cabernet with fruity undertones. And she’s suddenly grateful that Carmilla’s not a wine-o, because Laura can easily imagine her getting uppity and snooty about wine selections.

Another plus, she’ll be able to work with LaFontaine on any number of experiments, giving the girl information on what blood tastes like what food, you know, for science. Just a bit of qualitative data but hey, LaF would definitely appreciate the gesture.

It also doesn’t help that the room feels like a furnace and Laura is _wired_.

She feels like she did that afternoon her junior year in high school where she asked the cute barista she was crushing on at the time to add two shots of espresso to her hot chocolate. And she had wanted to sip on it and stare, as non-stalkerishly as possible, at said barista while working on her calculus problems. But she’d started tapping her pencil against the table within seconds and felt the heart palpitations five minutes later. It was a stalkerish flirting snafu, but the failure was supplemented with the knowledge that if caffeine affected her so seriously, other controlled substances should be avoided by at all costs.

At least her dad got something out of the afternoon.

To combat the heat, Laura strips down to her undies and tank, modesty forgone, and plops down in front of the mini-fridge with the door ajar, letting the cool hit her back and raise bumps on her skin. The air doesn’t induce the same chill it would have before she… well, _before_ , but it soothes something inside of her. She doesn’t focus on the changes, she can’t, because if she does she’ll probably break down on the floor of her dorm room in her underwear and that’s not supposed to happen until at least second semester.

She’s never been one to stew in emotional over-wroughtness, and getting bitten—uh, being changed—oh to hell with it, _turning into a vampire_ will not be the thing that breaks Laura Hollis.

She didn’t get a brown belt in Krav Maga by being a timid pansy-butt.

She pokes experimentally at her teeth and her canines feel larger, though not particularly sharper. She worries her bottom lip with the tooth but there’s no change, and she wonders if there’s some violent onset that occurs when vampires feel overwhelmed and hungry. Maybe that’s another reason she’s done so well; why she’s accepted and coped sans killing-spree.

Because she doesn’t feel overwhelmed. Well, yet.

Carmilla’s got a steady blood supply coming into the room, so Laura doesn’t have to worry about _killing_ people. With vampire thirst comes vampire strength, and the uncanny ability to remain alive for like, ever, so she’s got that to combat the Dean with. If she can just keep herself from becoming as crazy as the Zetas do on Thirsty Thursday, she just might well turn this gaping black hole of oblivion into a positive. She feels… saddened, a little, losing out on mortality she guesses, but she’ll have all of forever to be melancholy and overloaded with ennui.

For the time being, this… _state_ she finds herself in is a tool, one she can use to save Betty and the rest of the Silas girls.

Laura’s been sated with the cool blood from the fridge and the run (she realizes she ran from her dorm to the caf and then back, all in the space of about ten seconds), but she wants to wait and question Carmilla before she ventures into public again. Maybe it’s because it’s nighttime and everyone’s abed; maybe just seeing flesh will turn her into a predator; which is why Carmilla chooses to stay inside during the day, as the number of bodies out and about at nighttime seems to decrease significantly, even if they are on a college campus.

That’s what she can do!

Make a questionnaire, or a list, at least, of inquiries she has concerning her new condition. Carmilla had her mother to walk her through the process, and, as a bonus, corrupt her innermost being, but Laura’s lived with enough of Carmilla’s snark to know how to navigate the impending ‘I told you so’s’. Not that Carmilla’s chatty on her best days, but perhaps Laura could play up the whole, ‘virgin sacrifice gone wrong’ and make Carmilla feel guilty about her part in the process. She has a few new weapons in her arsenal (other than emotional manipulation and the katana), but she’d like to stick to what she knows.

* * *

 

Carmilla stalks into the room just after dawn with her rucksack slung over her shoulder and a scowl on her face, and Laura bounces up from the floor. She’s stuck her foot behind her and closed the mini-fridge with a deft _swack_ , facing her befuddled roommate with what she hopes is a guileless smile.

“What’s up with you, popsicle?”

And _oh_ , the sitting-in-front-of-the-fridge thing probably justifies that nick-name.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing is up with me.”

“Okay… but, you realize it’s barely six-thirty.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Your earliest class is at nine on Tuesdays. You like to sleep in, and by ‘in’, you usually mean seven forty-five.”

“So I was feeling an early start,” Laura deflects.

…

…

…

“And you were sitting in your underwear in front of the freezer,” Carmilla adds, though no leer crosses her features. Instead, her slight eyebrows converge and her nostril flares infinitesimally. “Why were you—”

“I got kinda hot,” Laura says, stooping to pick up her carefully constructed list of questions titled _Vampire Existence 101_. “Didn’t want to open a window because of—” What? Going vamp-loco and hopping from the second story, finding an unsuspecting victim in bed and turning her into this morning’s red-cell smoothie? “—spores,” Laura finishes.

“You smell different,” Carmilla comments, ignoring her.

“New… shampoo?”

“You haven’t gotten a new shampoo. I’ve been using the vanilla one—”

“You _have_ been using my shampoo!”

“That’s not the issue here, sweet cheeks.”

“At least I don’t reek of pine and algae. What did you do last night, take a dip in the freaky pond in Luscei Woods? You know there have been… _sightings_ there, right?”

“Sightings?” Carmilla asks. “I think I can handle myself cupc—wait. How did you know I— you smelled—”

“I mean, it was either that or you nearly drowned yourself in the river. Your hair’s still drying and the bottom of your bag is damp.”

“Oh,” Carmilla says, though her face still harbors hints of suspicion.

Laura is going to tell her. Especially since she’s gone through the trouble of writing out the questions, but the situation is delicate. It needs be handled… _gently_. In her present state, the topic's difficult to broach, now that she's closed the freezer and the warmth is returning with unnatural rapidity.

“I _am_ a journalism major, you know.”

“Sure,” Carmilla says, and brushes by Laura’s shoulder on the way to her bed. She chucks the sack on the floor and turns down the duvet. “Just make sure you— _scheiße_!”

Laura isn’t completely sure what’s happening. The last thing she remembers is Carmilla crossing the room and dumping her bag, but now Laura stands atop Carmilla’s mattress, Carmilla's back against the wall, and her own forearm pressing against her roommate’s trachea. Laura's skin is on fire, but she’s only _just_ closed the door to the refrigerator.

How could everything get _so hot_ so quickly?

Carmilla flexes against the arm at her throat and Laura pushes harder, not wanting to, _not wanting to_ , she reminds herself, and regards Carmilla, confused but furious.

“I—I’m sorry!” Laura says. “I don’t—”

“Put. Me. Down.”

“I want to, I do! But something’s—”

Carmilla places her hands on Laura’s hips and she shoves, _hard_ , but Laura snatches her wrist away and slams it with such untempered force that it puts a hole in the dry wall. Carmilla’s curled hand is covered in splinters and dust and Laura’s fingers, death-gripping the appendage and securing it overhead.

She presses into Carmilla harder with her forearm and the heat in her body surges, like mercury jettisoned in the glassware once the thermometer is placed under a feverish tongue. It feels _wonderful_ , this strange, predatory sensation of utter control. Knowing that she has the ability to crush Carmilla’s throat, break her wrist, get out from under her roommate’s and Danny’s and her father’s thumbs after so many oppressive years— oh, shoot.

_Shit_.

“Oh my gosh!” Laura cries, and falls backwards over the mattress. Her feet get tangled up in the sheets and she lands flat on her back, winded, but she barely feels it, scrabbling back toward her side of the room as quick as her small limbs will carry her. Carmilla clutches at her throat, not because she needs to breathe, Laura remembers, but because there’s half-moon marks from Laura's fingernails and a big red blotch on the skin where Laura had nearly _crunched her roommate’s airway_.

“I’m sorry!” Laura says, and she’s not crying, she’s just legitimately _freaked the eff out_ over the momentary power trip that relieved a bit of the stifling heat.

“How did you—?”

“Carmilla, don’t freak out,” Laura says.

“What the—you— I didn’t bite—”

“Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m on fire. Did it feel like this for you?” Laura starts, stands, and begins her paces. Her arms fly every which way, flapping to get some air circulation going. “I mean, I thought I was alright at first, the running was awesome, but the sodas did _nothing_ … but when I realized what was happening I came back here right away and drank your stash— sorry, but, you know—no, I’m not sorry! Because you’ve been stealing my stuff since day one, and that’s just a double standard that seems completely unjustifiable under the circumstances—”

“Laura.”

“—and if you’re going to—huh?”

And then Carmilla’s looking at her the way she did during the puppet fiasco, moist, dark eyes and unguarded expression, the slightest bulge of the cheek from holding her jaw so tightly.

And Laura won’t _take_ it. She will not be… _pitied_.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.

“Laura, it’s okay.”

“No, we’re not doing this. We’re not being… _sad_ , or, _sorry_ , or whatever, because if I think about that then I won’t be able to help Betty, and Elsie, and everybody else, and I’ve got this big list of questions that you’ll need to answer so I know what to expect, so I can be _prepared_ —”

“This isn’t something you prepare for. It’s… it’s not something you can anticipate,” Carmilla says, and takes a step toward the middle of the room. “Laura, I—”

“No!” Laura shouts.

“Laura—”

“Stop it! Just…God, stop.”

“I’ll help, but I can’t if you insist on deluding yourself to your… circumstances. It does no good brushing aside the…” Carmillla flounders, fishing for words. “…traits, the qualities. There are things you have to do—”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything! This will not control me!”

“You won’t be able to fight it. The need to feed, to overpower. You can't withstand nature of that magnitude—”

“Watch me!”

“Laura!”

“Stop it!” Laura cries again, reaches for something to throw in frustration, because her usual arm-flailing just isn’t cutting it. It’s the yellow pillow first on the ground, and yeah, she looks like a toddler throwing a tantrum; and then it’s the next closest thing, the bat-wing bracelet, and she drops it like the thing bit her, zapped her, a wasp sting, a… well, crap.

She takes a breath, unneeded, and licks her lips.

She’s still on fire.

“Stop calling me Laura,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because if we can go back to ‘creampuff’ and ‘cupcake’ and ‘buttercup’ it means nothing’s changed.”

…

…

…

“You’re better than this,” Carmilla demands, standing with her arms crossed in the middle of room. “At least, I thought you were.”

“Better. Than. What?” Laura fumes.

“Denial. It’s an unflattering hue for you.”

“So what, I’m grieving?”

“Your mortal existence, yes.”

“And what have you been doing for the past three hundred years, huh? Caught somewhere between bargaining with the universe and depression, right? Explains your oh-so-sunny disposition.”

“I understand what I am. And it’s a bleak existence.”

“Well, I’m not bleak!” Laura insists, fidgeting because it is _scalding_ in their room.

“You have to accept this—”

“You haven’t accepted it!”

“I _deal_.”

“I want my existence to be more than coping. I want my life to _mean_ something.”

“Ha, that will pass.”

“So you think it’s good to just give in, right? To throw it all up and… destroy, and take, and ravage, and…”

“That’s what you feel like doing, isn’t it?” Carmilla asks, leading. “Killing, ripping, tearing and mutilating, seizing, devouring and controlling. It’s toxic and potent, and the initial turn is always the most difficult. It’s… it’s frankly bizarre that you’ve resisted for as long as you have, though I suppose depleting my stash has helped somewhat.”

“I feel like I’m _burning_ ,” Laura whimpers.

“You need to feed.”

“On _what_!?”

“You know.”

“I won’t.”

“Laura—”

“I told you about the name thing.”

“I can take you somewhere. Somewhere you won’t… well, you won’t hurt a lot of people.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone!”

“The sooner you succumb the sooner you’ll be able to control it,” Carmilla snaps. “The first week is always the worst. After that the blood-shed is… contained.”

“You just want me to give in, then?” Laura asks, twitching towards Carmilla. “Go back on everything I’ve ever stood for, like choice and chance and hope and being better, deserving better—”

“Do what you have to do to see yourself through this. I’ll… attempt to hold you back if you go too far.”

And then the fire in Laura’s stomach erupts, Vesuvius explosions and melting organs and crying out for something, _something_ , and it’s not blood but _control_ , the power to hold or take or crunch a life out of existence with just the pressure of her forearm.

And Laura’s got Carmilla again, held one-handed despite the height difference, the fingers of her right fist curling around Carmilla’s throat, squeezing. Laura can feel the cartilage shift, the muscles and tendons bulging over her grip like an overlarge root system, transplanted in a too-small pot, soil and vine and leaf overflowing.

“Think hard, Carmilla,” Laura rasps. “Think hard about what… _who_ you’re encouraging to do this. I have had _no power_ for all of my life. Remember? ‘Naïve, provincial girl’. You said it.”

She walks Carmilla back until her spine collides with the wardrobe, and Carmilla’s reaching desperately for her wrist, struggling and clawing at Laura’s hand. Laura presses the weight of her body into Carmilla’s, hands, abandoning her roommate’s throat to hold her wrists down at her sides. Laura’s forehead bonks into the other woman’s nose with bruising force. She rams her roommate’s body into the wardrobe again and the piece pitches from the force of it, shuddering like an animal in wintertime.

“Think about the kind of girl who’s never had any… any _control_ , whatsoever, and the first thing you do is hand her the keys to the world.”

Laura ducks her mouth into Carmilla’s neck and she sniffs… it’s _wrong_ for feasting, but there’s another odor that Laura definitely recognizes, rolling off of the other vampire in shaky waves, like heated pavement at a distance. She drags her mouth against Carmilla’s neck and the vampire falls slack against her. Laura squeezes harder on her wrists.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Laura asks, pushing her harder into the wardrobe. And she doesn’t _want_ to be doing this but she can’t _stop_. Exacting this tiny vengeance is the only thing that tempers the incessant _heat_.

“No, you never wanted it like this, right, _Mircalla_?”

Laura uses a combination of her defense training and this new-found strength to twist them, and throws her own back against the furniture. It wobbles again, and she feels the handle digging in at the base of her spine.

_Good. That means Carmilla felt it, too_.

Carmilla’s before her, hands still buckled down at her sides, wary and disconcerted.

“You like to be big girl on campus, right? Like to pretend that you don’t care, even when you do, and you’re not girl enough to _say_ it, not brave enough to _fight_.”

She jumps and hitches her thighs around Carmilla’s hips, propped against the door and digging in with her nails into her roommate’s shoulders. Carmilla’s free hands fly to her thighs, her head tilting up to eye Laura’s foreign, calculating expression.

“Let me make it easier for you, sullen, sulky vampire,” Laura pouts, and leans into Carmilla’s face. “I won’t even put up a fight. None of your girls ever did. You just waltz in and have a good time with your little ‘study buddies’. But I’ve noticed you haven’t been studying a lot lately.”

“Forgive me,” Carmilla grits between clenched teeth. “I couldn’t get to my desk because I had ropes tied around me.”

“I’m not sorry,” Laura says, and it’s the _truth_ , because it was necessary at the time. “But I can make it up to you.” She feels her rogue hands start to rub circles over Carmilla’s shoulders, even though her mind protests and fights the reflex. Her thighs squeeze tighter on Carmilla’s hips, and her lips form words her brain never gave permission to speak:

“Since you’re going to help me be a good vampire, you can have whatever you want of mine. You already help yourself to my cookies, and my toiletries, but we can probably come to some sort of arrangement.”

Carmilla leans in closer, and Laura feels it: _POWER_.

It is heady, and amazing, and everything she’s been missing out on with mere human existence. She a gagillion watt fly-zapper and bugs are swarming around her, despite the fact that she could kill with a spark. She’s a weapon, and Carmilla, this 300-year-old monster of a being is hers to command _with a word_.

Laura leans her mouth in, near enough to feel her roommate wiggle closer and sigh against her lips, and she whispers, “I’ll put that flowy white dress back on and… I’ll even let you call me Elle.”

The grip on the undersides of her thighs tightens, almost painfully, and Carmilla yanks her head away from Laura’s.

And maybe she’s overstepped; control like this is difficult to wield since she’s basically a novice. But she has successfully seduced her co-inhabitant _twice_ , a thrilling prospect considering she was human on the first go-round. Carmilla shifts her hips and backs away, guiding Laura back down to stand on the floor. Her hands find Laura’s elbows and she squeezes, like she’s testing fruit firmness at the supermarket. She tugs on Laura’s arms until her fingers unlink from behind Carmilla’s shoulders, and Laura feels the heat return.

It’s maddening.

“You need to feed,” Carmilla says.

“But—”

“I won’t… I’m not your crutch. You can't... you can't use me just so you won't go biting people.”

…

…

…

“Yeah, okay,” Laura says, and it wallops her, the severity of what she’s done. Something she would've never done, had she been… not… a vampire. “I’m… I’m sorry. Gosh, I didn't know what I was... no, I'm so sorry. It’s just I, uh, I just feel really _hot_.”

“It’s burning away your humanity.”

“What?!” Laura squeaks.

“That’s how I rationalized it, during my change. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t bite with intent to turn—”

“I don’t think it was you,” Laura says, and Carmilla arches a brow. “Will,” Laura continues. “We were fighting in the bathroom and I think he grazed me. Probably unintentional.”

“Doubtful.”

…

…

…

“I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“No, it doesn’t. But we’ve got to get you stable enough that you’ll not launch some hellion-like fury on a student midday. Or attempt to crush my throat. Or…” Carmilla looks over at the wardrobe, shakes her head with a grin. “… _proposition_ me.”

“Yes, uh, I think I, uhm… might have crossed a line.”

“You’re not the first to want to jump my bones in a dorm room, sweet cheeks. Don’t let your ego get the better of you now that you’re—”

“Stronger than you?”

“—on a level playing field.”

“Oh, come on, you couldn’t even knock my hand out of the way!”

“You wanted me to break your arm?” Carmilla asks.

“Pfft, you could have tried.”

“Maybe I just like where you had me.”

“It’s comments like those that feed the weird part of my head overtaken by manic vampire control.”

“I’ll have to be extra careful with what I say from now on.”

…

…

…

“Carmilla, about the Elle thing—”

“There’s no need to discuss it.”

“It was a low blow. Cheap shot. I really am sorry.”

“Whatever, junior. Just… go get some clothes on,” Carmilla instructs. “We'll figure something out.”

The new bit of vampiric audacity probably fuels it, the pause at the bathroom door, coupled with the coy look over her shoulder.

“In that case, you’re sure you want me to put clothes _on_?” Laura asks with a grin, and then slams the door shut so Carmilla won’t see the flush rising in her freshly pallored cheeks.


End file.
